Creating Your Account
The Cull Diary requires a free account to sync your records securely across devices. Open the diary from the main First Light app by tapping Cull Diary in the header.
After creating your account, check your email for a confirmation link. Once confirmed, sign in with your email and password.
If you forget your password, tap Forgot password? on the sign-in screen. Enter the email for your account and use the link in the reset email to choose a new password (check spam if nothing arrives).
The Diary View
Once signed in, you land on the diary list. Entries show as cards in a scrollable feed, grouped by month. The layout matches the mock below: a dark green header (with First Light branding), then species chips on the cream panel — not a 2×2 stats grid with a gap, and not nav fused into the header card.
The three headline numbers are Culls (animals), combined carcass kg, and how many species you have recorded this season — one compact row, aligned with the app.
Use the season dropdown in the header row to switch seasons. Two icons sit to its right: the book opens this guide, and the gear opens Account & settings. Below them, a full-width Sightings strip (“Log live deer you see”) opens your Sightings log (live deer seen). Stats is the fourth tab on the bottom nav — it is no longer a header icon. The First Light mark at the far left is the home button: one tap back to the Field Guide, Ballistics and Deer School hub.
Once you have entries, a row with Newest / Oldest sort and Select appears — for bulk CSV, Dealer PDF (consignment declaration — see step 10a), or delete — plus an optional ground filter when you use more than one permission. The search bar (species, ground, tag, blank day, notes…) joins it once your diary reaches eight entries — a handful of cards needs eyes, not a query.
The last chip on the species filter is Pest ▸. Tapping it shows all Pest Control entries at once and expands a second chip row (Fox, Rabbit, Grey Squirrel, Pigeon, Corvid, Wild Boar) to narrow further; tapping All or any deer chip collapses the pest row again. The cull map has a matching single Pests chip. See section 03c.
When an offline queue is building, a banner appears above the entry list with Sync now once you are back online. The Diary tab can show a small offline badge when something is pending.
Adding a New Entry
Tap the + button or the Add Entry tab to open the full entry form. A Cull · Blank day · Sighting selector at the top chooses what you are logging (a helper line explains each), with Cull selected by default. A cull entry has an optional Photo then eight numbered sections — 1 Species, 2 Sex, 3 Date & Time, 4 Location, 5 Shot Details, 6 Carcass, 7 Larder inspection, 8 Notes. Blank day and Sighting show fewer, tailored fields (see 03b and 03d).
Photo
Take a photo with your camera or pick one from your gallery. This is optional but useful for records.
Photo details from the image (EXIF)
Most phone cameras stamp each photo with where and when it was taken. When the photo you add carries that data, a small Photo details found card appears under it — offering to fill the entry for you so you do not have to type it in.
Taken · 06:32 · 14 Jul 2026
Tap Use for this entry and the app fills your location (it drops the map pin and, when you are online, looks up a place name), the date, and the time — whichever the photo actually carries — then confirms with a toast such as “✓ Photo location + date & time applied”. Dismiss hides the card and changes nothing. If the photo’s date differs from the date already on the entry, the card warns you that Use will update the date too.
① Species
Tap the species you shot. All six UK deer species are available, and a collapsed Pest Control ▸ button under them opens six more: fox, rabbit, grey squirrel, pigeon, corvids and wild boar (section 03c).
② Sex
Select male or female. The label adapts to the species (Stag/Hind for red and sika, Buck/Doe for roe, fallow, muntjac and CWD).
③ Date & Time
Auto-filled with the current date and time (in UK time). Adjust if logging a past cull.
Outing start and Outing finish are optional — fill them when you are tracking hours stalked (DMG and government funding reports often require this rather than just shot times). The same two fields appear on blank-day entries.
④ Location
Enter a place name, use GPS for your current position, or drop a pin on the map. You can also assign the entry to a saved ground (permission/estate).
⑤ Shot Details
Record calibre (dropdown of common UK deer calibres or custom), distance, shot placement, age class, shooter name, and carcass destination.
Destination options: Self / personal use, Game dealer, Friend / family, Stalking client, Estate / landowner, Left on hill, Condemned.
The tag number links your diary entry to the physical carcass tag — useful for larder records, game dealer declarations, and DMG returns.
⑥ Carcass
Enter the carcass weight in kilograms.
⑦ Larder inspection
An optional gralloch / larder checklist for the carcass — tick anything abnormal (or None observed), with a free-text box for anything else. What you record here flows into the trained hunter declaration (Game dealer PDF, section 10a), so it is worth capturing at the larder rather than from memory later. Deer only — it does not appear for pest species.
⑧ Notes
Free text for wind direction, approach, behaviour, conditions — anything you want to remember.
Save
Tap the green Save button to sync your entry to Supabase — its label follows the mode (Save cull, Save blank day or Save sighting). If you're offline, it queues automatically and syncs when signal returns.
On long forms, a slim progress bar in the header fills as you scroll through the sections — useful on a phone in the field.
Undo a save
Right after you save a new entry, the success toast carries a short-lived Undo — a 6-second window to reverse a mistaken save (wrong species, an accidental double-tap) with a single tap. It appears on new culls and blank days saved online, from both the full form and Quick entry.
Tap Undo and the entry is deleted again — photo and all — with a “Entry removed” confirmation. Editing an existing entry shows a plain “Entry updated” instead (there is nothing to undo), and entries queued offline keep their own sync toast. If the window lapses or the undo can’t reach the server, you’ll see “Could not undo — the entry is saved” — open the entry and delete it from there instead.
Blank day (outing, no shot)
When you have been out but did not take a shot — and still want a dated record on the right ground — use Blank day instead of a full cull. Open Add entry, then use the in-form control to switch to the blank-day flow (you will not pick species, sex, or carcass details).
Log date & time, location and ground as usual, and add notes if you like. Photos are not part of a blank day in the same way as a cull entry — the list uses a no shot / landscape motif so you can spot it quickly.
In the diary list, the card title is Blank day with the ground and your note preview. Species filter must be on All — a blank day is not a deer species, so a species chip hides it. Search picks up blank, blank day, outing, and no shot in addition to your ground and notes.
Pest Control species
The species picker keeps its six deer buttons; below them sits a collapsed Pest Control ▸ button. Tap it to reveal Fox, Rabbit, Grey Squirrel, Pigeon, Corvid and Wild Boar. If you never shoot pests, you never see them — the deer workflow is unchanged.
Picking a pest species slims the form down automatically:
• Fox — sex becomes ♂ Dog / ♀ Vixen, and the age classes include Cub. No carcass weight, no tag number, no gralloch checklist.
• Rabbit, grey squirrel, pigeon, corvid — count-only: no sex, no age, no weight, no tag, no gralloch. Date, location, shot details and notes still apply — a pest entry can be saved in seconds.
For those four, a How many stepper appears (section 2). Type the number shot in one outing — tap the figure to key it straight in (e.g. 200 pigeons) rather than logging them one by one; it defaults to 1. That count flows into your diary Total, Stats, CSV and PDFs, and into syndicate tallies. Fox and wild boar are sexed, so they are logged one entry each.
Pest entries appear in the diary list and cull map with their own colours, count in your Stats, and can be attributed to a syndicate like any cull. They are excluded from larder and game-dealer documents (deer-only paperwork — section 10a) and have no cull targets — they are counts, not plan species.
Sightings — live deer seen
A sighting records deer you saw but did not shoot — it builds a picture of what is using your ground. In Add entry, switch the top selector to Sighting. Sightings are deer only and kept in your own private log — never shared with a syndicate, never counted as culls, and never in targets or dealer paperwork.
A sighting captures: Species, a How many seen composition (bucks / does / young / unknown steppers — at least one), optional Behaviour chips, Location (pin / GPS / ground), date & time, an optional photo, and notes. No sex, carcass, calibre or larder fields.
Open your log from the Sightings strip in the diary header (it also opens after you save one). The Sightings view lists them with species chips and a newest / oldest sort, plus a List / Trends toggle — Trends shows totals, a bucks-to-does ratio, animals by month, and a by-species breakdown. The hotspot map in List view can be narrowed by time of day (dawn / day / dusk / night — judged against sunrise and sunset at the pin) and by month. CSV and PDF buttons export a sightings report. Tap a card to open it, then Edit or Delete from the detail view; a small thumbnail shows when you attached a photo.
On the Stats cull map, a Culls / Sightings / Both toggle overlays sightings as density circles (green→red, sized by animals seen) so you can see which areas are getting the most deer activity. On Stands, each stand shows a Seen here card, and the Season Plan shows seen vs culled per species this season.
Quick Entry
For speed in the field, tap the Quick pill (lightning icon) above the + button. This opens a streamlined bottom sheet — just pick species, sex, and optionally enter a weight or tag number. Everything else can be added later by editing.
Viewing an Entry
Tap any entry card to open detail. If the entry has a photo, that photo is the hero — tap it for full size, or use the ⤢ expand button top-right — with the species and chips over it. Below sit cards on a cream background: a Where map, When & where, weights and distance, shot and stalking, notes, larder inspection (when you recorded anything), and weather when saved. There is no separate photo card, and Edit lives in the action bar at the bottom — not beside the image.
At the bottom, the action bar is Edit, PDF (a simple diary-style PDF for that cull), Game dealer PDF (a trained hunter declaration for game dealers and UK wild-game food-safety paperwork), then Delete. See also step 10a — Hunter declarations & consignments.
“Where” — the entry on the map
When an entry has a saved pin, its detail view includes a small Where card: a satellite mini-map centred on the shot, with an Open map › link. The bright pin is this cull in its species colour; faded dots are your other culls within 300 m, and a little legend names them.
Tap the card (or Open map ›) to blow it up to a full-screen, pan-and-zoom map; close it with ✕, the Escape key, or your phone’s back gesture. The full-screen view also carries an All culls › link through to the whole-season cull map on Stats.
Editing & Deleting
From the detail view, tap Edit to reopen the full form with all fields pre-filled. Make your changes and save. The entry updates in place — no duplicate created.
Tap Delete to permanently remove an entry. You'll be asked to confirm. Deleted entries cannot be recovered.
Season & Ground Management
The diary organises entries by stalking season — by default August–July, or twelve months from your own chosen start month (see Season start month below). Use the season dropdown in the diary header to switch between seasons.
Grounds (permissions / estates) let you tag entries by where you stalk. To add or review saved grounds:
1. Open Stats → on the Season Plan card tap Set targets or Edit (wording depends on whether you already have targets).
2. Open the By ground tab and use Add ground to name a permission.
3. Saved grounds then appear as tappable options in the entry form’s Permission / Ground field.
Season start month
By default the diary year runs August–July, so “2025–2026 Season” means Aug 2025 – Jul 2026. If your ground runs a different year — many Deer Management Groups plan April–March — set your own start month via the gear icon in the header → Profile → Season starts → Edit. Your entries re-sort into the new seasons instantly and losslessly, and you can change the setting back at any time — nothing about the entries themselves changes, only how they are grouped into seasons.
Targets caveat: cull targets keep their season names (e.g. “2025-26”) but count against the new dates after a change — a target you set for Aug–Jul becomes a target for Apr–Mar, so progress against it can shift. The app shows the old and new dates in a warning before anything is applied.
Syndicates are separate: each syndicate has its own season start month, which its managers set from the syndicate Manage sheet. Your personal setting drives your diary list, stats, targets and personal exports; syndicate cards, team targets, allocations and team exports follow that syndicate’s setting. The same cull can therefore legitimately sit in a differently-dated “2025-26” in the two places — that is correct, not a bug.
With a January start, seasons are single calendar years and are labelled that way (“2026 Season”).
Mapping your grounds
A ground can be more than a name in a list — you can draw it on a map: its boundary and acreage, no-shoot zones, tracks and rides, and point markers for the things that matter (trail cams, gates, the larder, a wallow). Mapped grounds power the acreage figures, the cull-density-per-100 ha note on Stats, and auto-suggest the right ground when you drop a pin.
Two ways in. Either open Account & settings (the gear) → the Grounds card → Manage (its line reads e.g. “3 grounds · 2 mapped”), which opens the My grounds sheet; or, on the Stands map, use the floating bar’s Grounds button. Before you have drawn anything, the map shows a Draw your ground boundary → invite.
Drawing a boundary. Choose Draw boundary, line the crosshair up on each corner of the ground in turn and tap ✚ Add point; Close ring joins the last corner to the first and shows the enclosed area. Drag a corner to nudge it, or tap it twice to remove it. Prefer to walk it? The boots button drops a corner roughly every 15 m as you walk the line — keep the screen awake. A boundary can hold up to 500 points; if it crosses itself the app still saves but warns you to check the corners.
The other shapes. The same editor also draws:
• No-shoot zones — ground you never take a shot toward (a road, houses, a footpath), drawn as its own outline.
• Lines — routes typed as Ride, Track, Footpath or Compartment (or a plain line); each shows its length.
• Markers — a single point typed as Trail cam, Parking, Structure, Gate, Larder or Wallow (or a plain marker). Pan the map, tap Place marker, then drag the dot to fine-tune.
Every shape can carry an optional name and note and belongs to one ground. Saving confirms with the shape and its size — e.g. “✓ Boundary saved — 100 ha · 247 acres” or “✓ Track saved — 1.2 km”.
Switching & managing. The Grounds button lists each ground with a colour dot and its acreage (or “not mapped yet — tap to draw”); tap one to fly the map to it. Manage grounds (or the Edit link) turns on a rename and a delete icon per ground — deleting asks first (Cancel / Delete anyway) and, importantly, keeps your high seats and diary entries; they simply lose the ground tag. Individual parcels, zones, lines and markers each have Edit and a ✕ that needs a second Sure? tap.
Measure without saving. The Measure tool (the ＋ menu, or Measure distance & area in the sheet) is a scratch pad — tap corners (or walk them with the boots button) for a live distance along the path, then Close for area to flip the readout to acreage and perimeter. Nothing is saved, and it works fully offline.
Import & export. In the My grounds sheet, Import KML/GPX brings a boundary in from another mapping tool (it arrives as its own new ground, named from the file); Export GeoJSON and Export GPX download all your shapes — with your high seats riding along as points/waypoints — as first-light-grounds.geojson / .gpx.
Cull Targets & Season Plan
Set cull targets to compare your plan to actual culls. From Stats, use Set targets or Edit on the Season Plan card (same sheet — the label depends on whether anything is set yet). The blocks below are HTML mocks aligned with diary.html — not PNG screenshots.
Season Plan card (Stats)
The card sits in the cream strip on Stats with your other summaries. Expand it to see targets vs actual chips and Edit (or Set targets when nothing is saved yet).
Season total
Steppers for each species (bucks / does — labels follow the species) set your headline season plan. A footer under the grid shows total bucks, does, and animals. The sheet opens on this tab first.
By ground
After you save at least one named ground, use this tab to split targets by permission. Unassigned buffer is for animals you still count in the season but have not parked on a named ground — the app explains how it lines up with the headline when you save.
While the sheet is open, Season total and By ground stay aligned in the background. If you close with changes you have not saved, you will be asked to confirm.
Plan chips on Stats
When grounds or ground targets exist, chips appear above the Season Plan card — e.g. Overview plus each ground (and Unassigned where it applies). Overview can follow the sum of ground targets when that is how you are running the season; tapping a ground filters the plan and stats to that place.
Past seasons are read-only for targets.
Stats & Charts
The Stats tab opens on an adaptive season progress hero, then the cull map, your plan card, and deeper breakdowns. The season selector on Stats matches your diary season.
Season progress hero
The top of Stats is a single headline that adapts to where your season stands, with a quiet strip of four secondary figures beneath it. It has three faces.
1 · You have a target. The label reads Season progress, the big number shows culls against target (e.g. 12 / 40), and a pace bar fills underneath with a small on pace marker at where a steady season would sit today. The caption pairs “30% of target” with an honest pace word: on pace, +3 ahead of pace, 5 behind pace, target met, +2 over target, 3 short of target, or opens in N days before the season starts.
2 · Culls, but no target. The label is This season, the bar becomes a species split (one coloured segment per species, with a small legend), and a ＋ Set a season target — track your pace button offers to switch pacing on.
3 · Nothing logged yet. The label is This season, the number is 0, the track is empty, and the caption reads “Nothing logged yet — your first cull will show here.”
The quiet strip underneath always shows four figures: Outings (every diary entry, including blank days), Species, Avg dist (average shot distance), and Blank days.
The cull map
Every entry with a pin appears on the interactive map. Three control groups sit with it:
• Map / Satellite — the base layer (your choice is remembered).
• Culls / Sightings / Both — which layer you are looking at.
• Pins / Heat — show culls as individual pins, or as a heat map of density (this toggle steps aside when you are viewing Sightings only).
Pins are branded. Each cull is a teardrop in its species colour with a ♂ / ♀ glyph, so colour and shape carry the meaning. Zoom out and nearby pins cluster into a count tinted by the dominant species; when you have culls on more than one date, earlier ones fade so the freshest read brightest (the caption notes “fainter = earlier”). Tap a pin for a little popup — species, sex, date, weight, tag, placement, location — with an Open entry › link straight into that record.
Reading the heat map. In Heat mode the caption tells you what warmth means: “Denser = where you cull most” for culls, “Warmer & larger = more deer seen” for sightings, and “Warmer & denser = more activity here” when both layers are on together.
Species chips under the map do double duty: they choose which pins show and they rebuild all the stats and charts below for that species (or All). They are separate from the Diary tab’s species filter (which only narrows the list) — set the same species here if you want the numbers to match what you were reading in the list.
Missing a pin? If some entries were saved without GPS, the map’s No GPS figure becomes tappable and opens a recovery sheet listing them. Tap Place on a row, drop the pin where it belongs, and it saves back to the entry (“Location saved”) — the same flow works for sightings, and it is the quickest way to backfill locations onto older records.
Fullscreen. The expand button opens the map full-screen and slides the layer toggles and species chips into an on-map tray so you keep every control; tap it again to drop back to the card. When nothing is pinned yet the map shows “No mapped locations yet” with a nudge to use Pin or GPS as you log.
Charts & breakdowns
Below the plan / exports area, open Charts & breakdowns to reveal sections such as:
• Monthly cull — activity through the season; the twelve columns run in your season order, starting at your season start month (Aug → Jul by default)
• Cull by ground — when you use grounds
• Species and sex splits
• Age class, shooter, carcass destination
• Calibre and shot distance (when those fields are filled on entries)
Each block respects your current season on Stats and the map species chip (see above). Empty sections show a short “no data” message.
Always visible on Stats
• Season progress hero — the adaptive headline and quiet strip described above; its figures follow the map species chip once you change it from All
• Season Plan — targets vs actuals; the Overview / ground chips above the plan choose which permission’s entries count as “actual” (separate from the map species filter)
• Syndicates card — shared team targets when you belong to a syndicate (see step 13)
• Exports — personal CSV / PDF / Summary / Larder; dealer declarations (step 10a)
Exporting Data
On the Stats tab, scroll to My diary exports. The four actions sit in one horizontal row (narrow tiles, icon + label) — same order and colours as in the app mock below. Under the row, a short note points you to Game dealer PDF on each entry.
How each export works
CSV, PDF, and Larder Book open the same bottom sheet: Season, Permission / Ground, then Entries matching selection (live count) before you generate. All Seasons appears when your history is loaded. UTF-8 CSV opens cleanly in Excel; PDF is a simple formatted list; Larder Book is a dedicated PDF for larder / game-handling style records (entries marked Left on hill are not included, and Pest Control entries never are — the Larder Book covers deer only).
The CSV includes Latitude / Longitude columns (populated when you saved a GPS pin or used the GPS button on Location) and Outing start / Outing finish times — useful for DMG and government funding reports that need GPS evidence or hours-stalked figures. The single-entry PDF and the diary PDF list the outing window in each entry's meta line; other PDFs (Larder, Game Dealer, Consignment, Season Summary) are deliberately unchanged.
Summary opens a different sheet (same season + ground idea) to build the Season Summary PDF — header stats, species breakdown, plan progress, and a full entry table — good for estates or DMGs.
Elsewhere in the app
• Entry detail — PDF vs Game dealer PDF (see declarations & consignments below).
• Diary list → Select — multi-select entries for CSV, Dealer PDF (consignment declaration for several carcasses at once), or Delete.
• Syndicate exports (managers only) — team-wide CSV / PDF / Summary / Larder under Stats; see step 13.
Trained hunter declarations & consignments
These are not the same as the big Stats exports above — they are legal-style PDFs built from your entries for game dealers and food-safety traceability.
One carcass — trained hunter declaration. Open any entry → Game dealer PDF. That downloads a trained hunter declaration for that single cull, using the details you saved (species, shot, destination, tag, abnormalities, etc.). The plain PDF button next to it is only a simple diary record of the same entry — useful for your files, but different in purpose.
Many carcasses, one delivery — consignment declaration. On the diary list, tap Select, tick every entry that is leaving in the same consignment to the game dealer, then Dealer PDF. The app produces one PDF covering the whole batch (one declaration block and signature line for the delivery). This matches how assimilated Reg. (EC) No 853/2004 paperwork often expects one declaration per consignment rather than one PDF per carcass. Entries marked Left on hill are excluded; if none of your selection qualify, the app will tell you.
Pest entries are excluded. Declarations and consignments are wild-game (deer) documents: pest entries show no Game dealer PDF button, and any pests ticked in a selection are left out of the consignment — if nothing else qualifies, the app tells you.
These PDFs support your records workflow — they do not replace professional legal or food-business advice.
Offline Mode
The diary works without signal. When you're offline:
• New entries are saved to a local queue on your device
• A banner shows how many entries are queued and storage used
• When signal returns, entries sync automatically
• If storage runs low, photos are stripped from queued entries first to save space (you're told at the time)
Account & Privacy
Your diary data is stored securely in Supabase with row-level security, so no other user or syndicate member can see your entries. The site operator can access data only where necessary to run the service, fix a problem, or meet a legal obligation.
Tap the gear icon in the header of the Diary or Stats tab (or the Account & settings button at the bottom of Stats) to open the settings sheet:
• Profile — edit your display name (used on your account card, PDF signatures, and in syndicates), change your password, set your season start month (see section 07a), and choose the deer on your ground (which species to surface)
• Grounds — Manage your permissions and their boundaries (see Mapping your grounds)
• App — the version you are running with a Check button for updates, and your offline sync status (entries saved without signal) with a manual Sync now
• Sign out — signs you out on this device
• Delete account — permanently removes your account and all diary data
For full details, read the Privacy Policy.
Syndicates — full walkthrough
Syndicates let a small team share group cull targets next to your personal diary. Access is invite-only. The layouts below are HTML mocks matched to the real Cull Diary (diary.html / diary.js) — not PNG screenshots, but the same labels and flow.
Where to find syndicates
Stats tab → scroll until you see the Syndicates card (it sits above My diary exports). It is collapsed by default — tap the header row or “Tap to show” to expand.
• New (green) opens the create sheet (next section).
• After you have teams, each syndicate appears as a tappable row with progress — tap to open manage.
Create a syndicate
Tap New → bottom sheet opens with title New syndicate / subtitle Create a group and set targets.
- Name — e.g. “North Block syndicate”.
- Allocation — Group total (shared pool) or Per-member allocations (manager sets each member’s caps separately).
- Ground filter (optional) — pick a saved permission, or Other / new ground… to type a label. Only entries whose Permission / Ground matches exactly (same spelling) count toward this team’s totals. Leave empty to count all members’ qualifying entries.
- Tap Create syndicate. On success, the manage sheet opens for that team.
Entries must match this ground label to count. Empty = all grounds.
Manage: members, targets & invites
Open a syndicate from the list → sheet title shows the syndicate name; subtitle shows Manager or Member and that syndicate’s current season.
Managers see:
• Members — each active member with role; Promote / Remove (demote another manager only if there are two or more managers). You cannot remove the sole manager. Leave at the bottom if you are a member; managers must promote someone else before leaving.
• Group targets — species/sex steppers for the current season + Save targets (group mode).
• Per-member allocations — choose a member, set their allocation grid, Save allocations for member (individual mode).
• Season start month — sets the syndicate’s own stalking year (default August). It applies to every member’s syndicate cards, team targets, allocations and team exports, and is separate from each member’s personal setting (section 07a). A warning shows the old and new season dates before the change applies; it is reversible.
• Invite link — Generate new invite link; copy URL; list of active invites with uses left, expiry, Copy / Revoke.
• Manager · culled by member — read-only log of team culls for oversight. Pest entries appear here too — foxes as Dog / Vixen, the sex-less pests with no sex label.
• Delete syndicate (destructive).
Pests in syndicates: pest entries attributed to the syndicate count in member tallies, the manager log and team exports — but group targets and allocations stay deer-only (pests are counts, not plan species).
Members (non-managers) see progress copy and can Leave — they do not edit team targets.
Generate a link and send it to members. They must be signed in to accept.
Join with an invite link
Your manager sends a URL (time- and use-limited). Open it while signed in to the same browser / PWA — the app accepts the invite and adds you to the syndicate. If the link expired or was revoked, ask for a new one.
Ground filter & syndicate attribution
• Ground filter on the syndicate only affects which of your diary entries count toward that team’s plan — it does not rename your grounds globally.
• On Add entry / Edit entry, use Permission / Ground and Syndicate attribution (optional). A cull can count toward at most one syndicate; leave personal-only if you want no team credit.
• The ground dropdown groups Syndicate permissions vs My permissions so you can see which labels match a team filter. If the text does not match the syndicate’s filter exactly, the cull may not count toward the team.
Team exports (managers only)
If you are a manager, a second block appears under your personal exports: Syndicate exports (managers) — Team CSV, Team PDF, Team Summary, Team Larder. These pull team-wide diary data (every member), not just your rows. Attributed pest entries are included — except in Team Larder, which stays deer-only (pests carry no weights).
Tapping one opens a modal: pick Syndicate, Season, and (for CSV/PDF list) This season only vs All seasons. Summary follows the season shown.
Syndicate messaging
Each syndicate has a single rolling thread for team chat — manager announcements and member discussion mixed together. Useful for "I'm out at North Wood today", "saw a roe doe by the larch", weekend plans, and so on. The thread is polled, not real-time — the app refreshes when you open the manage sheet or the Stats card.
Where to find it — open a syndicate from the Stats card, then look for the Messages section in the manage sheet. The syndicate row on Stats shows a moss-green unread chip next to the team name only when there are new messages since you last looked; once you are caught up the chip simply disappears. Tap the chip directly to jump straight to the thread.
Posting — type into the box and tap Post. Messages are 500 characters max, cannot be edited after posting (write twice, post once), and are stamped with your member name and role at the time of posting (so a future role change does not rewrite history).
Pinned messages — managers can pin up to 3 messages at once (a indicator marks them). Useful for stuck-at-the-top notices like "weekend cull plan" or "ground rules". Soft-deleting a pinned message auto-unpins it. Members cannot pin or unpin.
Soft delete — your own messages can be removed; managers can remove anyone's. Removed messages no longer render but stay in the database with a deletion stamp, so the audit trail is preserved.
What you see — the thread fetches the most recent 30 messages in a fixed scroll region. Older messages remain in the database for audit but are not shown in the UI, to keep the sheet quick on mobile.
Stands & Deer Forecast
The Stands tab (third button on the bottom bar) stores your high seats and stalking spots — on one ground or on grounds counties apart — and scores each one's dawn and dusk windows for the next 7 days using weather, moon, rut and season, fetched fresh for that stand's exact location.
Adding a stand
Tap + Add stand. Give it a name, optionally link it to a saved ground, and set its location with the pin map or GPS — the same pin flow as a cull entry. Up to 60 stands; adding and editing need a connection (scores are cached for offline viewing). As you set the location, a small map preview shows the seat (Tap to adjust). You can also record the way it faces and add photos — see Facing, photos & where it sits below.
Bad winds is the important part: tap the compass directions that blow your scent from the stand toward where the deer come from. When the forecast wind blows from one of those directions during a window, that window's score is cut. Two seats 400 m apart share the same weather — bad winds are what make them score differently.
Reading the list
Stands group by ground. Each card shows a wind rose (red arc = your bad winds; gold arrow = today's forecast wind — arrow in the red arc means scent trouble), today's best window, and your cull count there. Above the list, a “Your next sit” hero calls out the single best upcoming window across all your stands — e.g. “Your next sit · tonight” with the seat, the time it opens, an activity read (High / Moderate / Low) and a wind / moon pill — the "which seat, tonight?" answer at a glance. For the whole week, switch to Plan week.
Sorting & filtering. Sort by Ground (grouped) or Best (today’s top score first), switch between Cards and a tighter Compact density, and — once you have a few seats — open Filter seats to show only a chosen ground or marker type, or to hide seat / marker names on the map.
Wind evidence. Once a stand has enough history, its card can back the theory with fact — e.g. “23 of 31 culls here came on a SW wind · today: SW ✓” — drawn from your own culls (or sightings) at that seat. It only appears when the record is solid enough to mean something.
Best seat this week
With two or more stands and a live forecast, a List / Plan week toggle appears. Plan week lays your seats against the next 7 days in a grid and rings the best seat for each day in gold — the fastest way to answer “which seat, which evening?”. A Best / Dawn / Dusk lens narrows it to the window you care about; each cell is a deer-activity score with its dawn/dusk tag, and tapping a day opens it.
Share plan copies (or opens the share sheet for) a tidy text summary — one line per day naming the seat, window and score — ending with the app’s address, handy for a message to whoever you stalk with.
Scent cones on the map
Switch the Stands view to the map and turn on Scent cones to draw a downwind wedge from each stand — the rough patch of ground where a deer could catch your scent on that day's forecast wind. Each cone is coloured by whether the wind betrays you there: green (clear — the wind is in your favour), amber (marginal), red (busted — your scent blows toward where the deer come from) or grey (too calm to call). A day stepper (Today … +6) scrubs the cones across the week so you can pick the evening the wind sits right, and a small legend under the map names the colours. The cones read from the same forecast wind and bad-wind settings as the window scores, so they broadly track each stand's dawn/dusk ratings (they reflect one representative hour, so at the margins a cone and a score can differ).
Stand detail
Tap a card for the 7-day table — dawn and dusk scored separately, ⚠ marking windows penalised for bad wind — plus today's sunrise, sunset and legal light (±1 hour) calculated for that stand's coordinates, and Your record here: culls, blank days, species and dawn-vs-dusk split from this season's entries within 300 m of the stand.
＋ Add entry here opens a new cull entry with the stand's pin, name and ground already filled. Edit changes any detail; Delete asks for a second tap to confirm.
Facing, photos & where it sits
Looks towards. Separate from bad winds, you can record the way a seat faces — a pure memory aid that changes no scores. Tap one of the eight compass points (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW), or use Point on map for an exact bearing; it reads back as e.g. “Looks 205° (SW)” and shows as a pointer and a view cone on the map. Tap the lit direction again to clear it.
Photos. Add up to 3 photos per stand — the seat and the view from it — so you can find it again in the dark or hand it to a guest.
Where it sits. A stand’s detail carries its own satellite mini-map: a gold seat pin, a gold facing cone (when you have set one), a dashed 300 m ring, and your nearby culls, with a legend naming the seat, the direction it looks, and each species within range. Tap it to open full-screen (pan and zoom; close with ✕, Escape or back).